I’m in a game where an ally just got backstabbed, and somehow this set me thinking on this:
Some mechanic that makes older stars (more mature, more developed) better and better. Say, every cycle, each star you control gains +.1% more effectiveness, meaning a 100 cycle star with 10 10 10 would actually behave as if it were 11 11 11 (+0.1% x 100 = +10%). My only reasoning for this suggestion is the desire to make your origin star that much more important, since it (and the cluster you originate from) will have a nice bonus on it compared to the new star you captured from an opponent, which now has +0% efficiency.
Not only that, but in the reverse - taking out an opponents origin star would be more impactful than taking an equally leveled star that they recently conquered.
Probably not necessary to add this sort of complexity to the game, but I had other ideas that had popped up in my head that I had forgotten, and hoped writing about this one would help bring them back. That failed, and this is all I got for now.
A similar idea would be to perhaps reduce the cost of infrastructure upgrades based on how long ago the last one was, that way building on player homeworlds would get cheaper and people would build more on them, making them more valuable?
Perhaps. But maybe it could be balanced in such a way to actually close the gap a little? If everyone’s starting cluster is substantially better in some fashion, then expansion stars would, comparatively, provide slightly less power.
Another radically drastic idea. I’m a huge fan of Diablo and many of its spinoffs. Perhaps there could be a mode where every star has something of a prefix/suffix modifier, with your starting cluster always having a special set of attributes.
For example:
Your origin cluster always has [PlayerName’s] Origin. This modifier could be +10% effectiveness.
You could find “Resourceful” which could add +5 to the star’s natural resources. Or “Mechanical” that could do something like “Industry costs 5% less on this star” or “Industry produces 5% more ships” - there a ton of fairly simple concepts that could be thrown in (however more exotic, difficult to code ones would really be where the idea would shine - perhaps something like “all stars within scanning radius get +1 to Economics”).
Something that could instead help weaker players would to straight up provide more strength the less power a player has (these could be complicated though). Something, for instance, that makes a star produce an exceptional number of ships based on the difference between how many ships you have as a percentage of the total amount of ships in-game. Fewer ships you have, the better. If you have the most, the bonus is disabled.
Ideas would be easy to spitball, but I’ve lurked here for a while and I know the AI and the server platform are first on the list of things to do, But hey thinking up stuff is fun!
Currently, user created game settings allow all stars galaxy wide, not including starting cluster stars, to have either Sparse, Standard, or Plentiful Natural Resources. You are asking for Sparse NR.
All stars have random Natural Resources from 1 - 49.
All expansion stars are modified by the galaxy wide NR setting. You are asking for Plentiful NR.
Jay would have to write new code to apply this bonus to individual stars.
The HW always has 50 NR. All empires starting cluster stars have the same pre-defined NR.
Empires can research Terraforming tech, to improve Resources empire wide.
Empires can research Manufacturing tech, which is applied empire wide.
Jay would have to write new code to apply this bonus to individual stars.
Currently, user created game settings allow all stars galaxy wide to have either Cheap, Standard, or Expensive ECON IND SCI and either None, Cheap or Expensive WG. Starting cluster stars are affected also.
You are suggesting that these settings could be applied to individual or groups of stars.
Jay would have to write new code to apply this bonus to individual stars.
Currently, all empires can research Terraforming, Banking, Manufacturing, Experimentation techs, which apply empire wide.
You are asking for Cheap IND game setting, which is applied galaxy wide.
Jay would have to write new code to apply this bonus to individual stars.
How would this be explained in the science fiction context ?
This is different from empire wide Banking tech.
Terraforming tech is empire wide.
Then what happens to this bonus when player A captures player B’s home cluster ?
Currently, all empires’ starting cluster stars have the same pre-defined NR, not affected by the galaxy wide NR setting.
How would this be explained in the science fiction context ?
Most of the time, when a player has fewer ships, he is on his way to losing the game, unless he somehow has superior Weapons tech, or reliable allies.
We have had this situation come up before in the game/forum.
That ( too many ships ) bug crashed the game, but Jay fixed it.
One of the intermediate fixes was that an empire with too many ships would slow down or stop production.
NP2 does not do that anymore.
But this idea could come back ?
The ship builders become lazy in a powerful empire, reducing ship production.
Oh I understand that Jay would need to write new code to do any of these sorts of things, and options to change settings on a universal scale already exist. I was more thinking along the lines of how to add a little entropy, as well as making particular stars feel more unique.
I hadn’t considered the challenge of explaining anything within a scifi context though - I’m sure it could be done though! Irrelevant though, if the concepts are too wild to warrant building.
One of the reasons I felt like posting these crazy ideas at all were because I know Jay is looking towards Triton development sooner or later. I’m sure he’s already got his head full of his own crazy ideas too insane to add and doesn’t need any help. But who knows, maybe I’d spark something simple that would actually benefit the game
An idea that could help weaker players might be like this :
Every star has a natural ability to gain efficiency. This efficiency property becomes worse as the star becomes more mature developed. Weaker stars gain efficiency more easily and quickly, but more mature developed or powerful stars gain efficiency slowly.
This “degrading efficiency” idea could make the game more interesting.
The empire is growing quite well. All the lazy bankers, ship builders, scientists are looking forward to taking a vacation on Risa.
This way, the more powerful empire is degraded, allowing the weaker empire a chance to rally some allies.
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